


Wasteland

by diversionary_tactician



Category: Original Work
Genre: Breaking the Fourth Wall, Comedy, Crack Treated Seriously, Dark Comedy, Defying Archetypes, Detective Noir, Gen, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, Prompt Fill, Writer's Block, Writers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-05
Updated: 2016-05-05
Packaged: 2018-06-06 11:53:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,751
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6752872
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/diversionary_tactician/pseuds/diversionary_tactician
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A noir mystery writer experiences vicious writer’s block in the form a rebellious character that has no intention of following his script and little interest in conforming to his archetype.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Wasteland

**Author's Note:**

> This was inspired by the book Redshirts and written for the following prompt: Noir/Detective, A Wasteland, an Absent-minded Professor, & Rapt.

_The Yard was deserted; Carter Hastings sat with his worn Oxfords on the mahogany wood of the desk. The Captain would slap them off if he came by and saw, but the nighttime maintenance staff had turned out every light outside the bullpen and Hastings doubted there was another soul in the building save the janitors. The lousy take out he'd eaten at half past eight was burning its way back up his throat unpleasantly. A bottle of antacid sat empty in his top desk drawer from a countless menagerie of nights like these. He carded with rapt attention through the pages, the notes, the reports, the coffee stains, and dog-eared edges, the interviews, the photographs. Nothing, a whole lot of nothing. Carter Hastings wasn't a bleeding heart but the thought of the broken glass shards of the snow globe covered in cheap glitter, blood, and a snaggle of blonde hair swam up in his short-term memory. The plastic figurine of a girl in a purple dress hugging a teddy bear had lain in the tiny puddle of spilled water and cracked plastic skyline. These were the ones that kept him up at night._

_For the first time in hours, Carter felt the impulse toward motion, a fierce aggravation with the inadequacy of a file which was failing not only to reveal the killer, but also any obvious avenue of inquiry. He shouldered his coat in a smooth fluid motion and felt the muscles in his legs protest the change in position after hours of forced stillness. He cut a brisk pace out of the office, pulling on a pair of fine leather gloves and shoving his hands in his pockets for good measure. The winter had come on hard. The air bit unforgiving at the exposed skin of his ears, nose, and lips. Yes, he decided. This was what he needed. The streets were practically empty at this late hour, but Carter would hardly have noticed anything save the remarkable as lost as he was in the minutia of the case. The park was his most familiar haunt, a lush conglomeration of greenery in the daytime, became a dim memorial to the city's underbelly at night. He barely considered his steps. Yet, whether or not he meant to arrive there, he found himself, tonight, as he so often did, standing on the bridge. He rested his elbows on the icy banister, and stared up at a stunning moon, full and round in defiant opposition to the sun._

"You do realize this is the tenth day in a row that the moon’s been full. Be honest with me, are you even trying? Do you know that you are breaking the basic tenants of astronomy with this hogwash you’re turning out, unless you've suddenly lapsed genres into science fiction," Carter complained. He kicked an extraneous “or not” out of my phrasing with his foot like a pebble. “I’m sorry to have to be the one to break this to you James, but you don’t seem to have a knack for this whole writing thing.”

“I have two masters degrees and a doctorate that suggest differently” I respond dryly. I’ve worked at Harvard and Yale, had students give me that stars-in-their eyes look, like I’m Socrates or Scorsese. If only they knew. I wish, I heartily wish, this were the first time I've had to suffer this absurd repartee. It isn't. I feel like I'm going twelve rounds bare-knuckle with a mac truck. My manuscript is a literary wasteland, a desolation of adverbs and adjectives.

"Ah, so that’s why you’re eating ramen noodles in boxers that have holes in them.” For the hundredth time I wonder why I made this guy such a miserable bastard. Though, I can't argue with the man when he's got a point. 

“Touche” I sigh. Now that I've capitulated to his juvenile complaining, I sincerely hope that he will go back to doing as he's told so we can just get on with it. 

“. . .and while we’re on the subject of these late night strolls through some barren, depressing park in thirty degree weather, maybe we can have a chat about this unnecessarily brooding personality you’ve saddled me with. Those guys I work with, Chloe, Jim, Ajit, you know what they do when they're done with work? They go to a karaoke bar and drink girly cocktails. You ever consider that that might be a better late night activity for me than standing here freezing my ass off under a scientifically unsound moon and then going home to drink cheap whiskey out of the bottle? I don't even like whiskey.”

“Gumshoes don’t get to drink girly cocktails, buddy. Not to be a pain in the ass or anything but it would help my process if you stayed in character here,” I request, more than a little irritation coloring my tone of voice.

"Your process. . ." Carter repeats unimpressed. He rolls his eyes skyward as if to remind some unnamed power that this is what he has to deal with. He affects his most outrageous mockery of a brooding expression and places both his gloved hands on the railing of the bridge, looking up at the indisputably full moon. I am tempted to get a last word in, to tell him that I could have written out those fine leather accouterments and let him freeze his useless fingers off, but decide to quit while I'm ahead.

I place my own hands over the keyboard and watch the cursor blink. At moments like this, I wish for a typewriter. Something about depressing the significant weight of the keys would give my work a feeling of finality that I never seem to accomplish these days, even after I've seen the proofs. Unfortunately, I don't have the time or the budget for antiquing especially not when Carter's kicking up, and besides my work's not good enough that I can get away with that level of eccentricity. Let's face it, I'm not exactly Danielle Steel. The blinking cursor mocks me. I wonder if it can hypnotize people who watch it long enough without putting down words, like those long-distance drivers that get road hypnosis and crash their cars. Nothing comes to me, instead I backtrack, _the waning moon, ensconced in a veil of grey blue clouds, bathing the water in darkness_ , I correct my previous statement. "Happy now you pompous git" I mutter under my breath. Magnanimity is perhaps not my strongest personal trait. I go back to where I left off. 

_The workday had long since ended. Any respectable commuters or lovers out for a stroll vacated the park some hours before. What was once an oasis had become a wasteland as the bleak and neglected leaked out the crevices like ectoplasm. Silence wrapped around Carter Hastings like a shroud, not the empty silence of his dark and impersonal flat, but the type of quiet punctuated by the occasional background noise of nocturnal creatures - human and animal - bodies shifting in the grass or on the icy benches, and the occasional groans of unsatiated addicts and rendezvousing strangers. It was only the night creatures here, and Carter counted among their number, his thoughts as swirling and dark as the water below. There had to be more he wasn't seeing, an angle he had yet to explore. He played the facts over and over again in his mind like a Rubik's Cube, looking for the one angle that would drop all the elements of the crime into place, the scarf, the note, the cigarette butts, and the shattered snow globe. Carter turned wearily wandering from the scenic bridge to the darker corners of the park where toothless dealers marketed their wares. He approached a haggard looking man with ugly sores decorating his flesh. "I'll have whatever you're on, pal. Because if I have to sit through one more minute of this sober I'm going to. . ."_

"Hey, Stop it! That's not funny," I cry in alarm and growing exhaustion. I quickly erase the offending lines.

"Really James. Rubik's cube? Could you get any more cliché? Oh and another thing. . .have you somehow failed to encounter the definition of silence in your twenty-seven years? Without the complete absence of sound, it's not really silence, now is it? In fact, it is actually the exact opposite of silence. And why. . .why do I want to stand around listening to strangers cheat on their wives while waiting to get eaten by a rabid raccoon. The wasteland bit though, well I can't argue with that. It's almost poetic. Congratulations James, you've stumbled on a handful of decent prose. Actually, why not just make it the title of this book. Wasteland, it seems apt considering the quality of the material. Look, I get that you're trying to birth some kind of epiphany here. But if it's all the same to you I think I'm going to call it a night." he decides.

"All the same to me?" I gape incredulously. "You're my meal ticket, you narcissistic apparition and somehow I don't think my editor will accept 'the character didn't feel like it' as an excuse for a half finished manuscript. So no it's not _all the same to me_."

"You know, you drink cosmopolitans all the time," Carter grumbles bitterly, as though our previous conversation had never ended.

"I'm a writer, people expect me to be a poncy git. When I get wasted on twelve-dollar drinks at a bar people just think I'm eccentric. You're archetypal. You don't get to be eccentric," I reply, rubbing at my temples as though my brain is vying for an escape. 

"Come off it with the slang James. Just because you write about London doesn't actually make you British." Carter groans with an exaggerated sigh. My character, I quickly decide, wants to be more of a prima donna than a Philip Marlowe. How had I aimed for a Sam Spade and birthed a Sherlock Holmes? It isn’t until a moment later that I realize I voiced the treacherous thought aloud. Carter scoffs. "Oh please, don't flatter yourself. You are no Conan Doyle,"

I rest my elbows on the desk and my forehead in my palms. The gentle pressure against my head feels better than it ought to. I half wonder if Carter is actually the product of a tumor pressing on my temporal lobe. If he is I'm doubly screwed since even though he's an uncooperative bastard, he's the only decent idea I've ever had.


End file.
